This week's activity in Tinkering Fundamentals: A Constructivist Approach to STEM Learning is about scribbling machines, small devices made from recycled parts to generate some kind of unique drawing on paper. Key components involved in making this machine work are a simple DC motor, a battery, and some writing instruments. If you'd like to make one, here is the activity guide on scribbling machines from the Exploratorium.
I decided to make one very "traditional" scribbling machine with three pens and a petri dish as a base (traditional because it resembles the machines in the activity guide). The second scribbling machine uses a single pen, and a plastic piece from a stuffed mechanical toy I took apart in the previous week's activity. I selected this piece of plastic because I thought it might produce some interesting patterns once set in motion. On this second machine, I used the motor to spin a wheel made from the top of a play dough cup. The two machines produced very different patterns, as you can see in the videos below.
This activity can be extremely open-ended, giving students just the initial concept (battery must power a motor which vibrates object holding pens to draw on paper) but leaving the rest of the design up to them. When I do this with my class in the fall, I will provide a number of objects of varying shapes, sizes, textures and colors from which students can build their scribbling machines.
The process of designing, testing, refining, retesting is naturally embedded in a project of this kind. There are so many variables, such as body shape, off-set weight on motor, pen types, motor polarity, and more, with which students can experiment. When I envision doing this activity with students, some questions that come to mind are:
Going beyond the basic scribbling machine requirements, students might create one that is turned on by a switch, lights up an LED, waves a flag, or is remotely controlled. The possibilities are truly without limit. Have you done this with your students? I'd love to hear about it.
I decided to make one very "traditional" scribbling machine with three pens and a petri dish as a base (traditional because it resembles the machines in the activity guide). The second scribbling machine uses a single pen, and a plastic piece from a stuffed mechanical toy I took apart in the previous week's activity. I selected this piece of plastic because I thought it might produce some interesting patterns once set in motion. On this second machine, I used the motor to spin a wheel made from the top of a play dough cup. The two machines produced very different patterns, as you can see in the videos below.
This activity can be extremely open-ended, giving students just the initial concept (battery must power a motor which vibrates object holding pens to draw on paper) but leaving the rest of the design up to them. When I do this with my class in the fall, I will provide a number of objects of varying shapes, sizes, textures and colors from which students can build their scribbling machines.
The process of designing, testing, refining, retesting is naturally embedded in a project of this kind. There are so many variables, such as body shape, off-set weight on motor, pen types, motor polarity, and more, with which students can experiment. When I envision doing this activity with students, some questions that come to mind are:
- What can you do to make the pattern more or less uniform?
- What happens when you reverse the wires on the motor?
- Can you produce a drawing that is not circular?
- Can you intentionally produce solid versus dotted lines?
- What kind of design makes the machine travel farther/shorter?
Going beyond the basic scribbling machine requirements, students might create one that is turned on by a switch, lights up an LED, waves a flag, or is remotely controlled. The possibilities are truly without limit. Have you done this with your students? I'd love to hear about it.
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